First kills, First kisses
by X5thAvenueX
Summary: Girls come and go, in more ways than one, and oh, how they never change.
1. To crucify and create

**First kills, First kisses**

This is going to be a collection of one-shots, based on significant moments over the course of the lives of the main characters, beginning before the show, and going right through to season 7. Each will have a different theme, cause it will be unique for each person.

First is Ziva, with some TIVA references, but mainly just about her.

Disclaimer: I do not own NCIS.

Chapter 1: To crucify and create - Ziva David has no qualms whatsoever with killing a man. She might have once, but that was a very long time ago.

* * *

She wakes to a dimly lit room and a dead weight on top of her.  
She thinks "this is not right".  
She pushes the body away, skin icy to touch, and she knows she should feel sick.  
It is not okay to kill a man.

She stands, shakily, the previous events coming back to her in flashes of grey and white and horrible truths.  
She was sent here, wherever the hell here is, and he had fought back.  
That is all she knows.  
She knows that she came to kill him, but she does not even know his name, and it is that that makes her a monster, not the bullet in his chest.

He is almost double her size, and she feels a swell of pride that she has won.  
Guilt immediately overrides it, and her lips tremble, but she feels - she knows - that crying will be an admission.

Carefully avoiding eye contact with herself, she uses a small mirror on the wall to fix her hair and clothes and wipe _him_ from her face, and when her jacket is too bloody to wear, she reminds herself that she did not like it anyway.

Fifteen years old and already a killer. She wishes she could say she is sorry.  
Her father will be so proud.

Her father _is _proud, as he pats her head and kisses her cheek and says "Ziva, you are now a woman".  
She does not remember exactly where she was when the world became like this, but she feels she should.  
He passes the news on to the rest of her family with glee, but their smiles are a little more forced than his, and perhaps it is pity rather than pride in their eyes.  
Later, over dinner she does not eat, he takes her picture, in celebration, but she does not want to mark the occasion.  
Her eyes are wide and bright and he does not notice that when the light flashes in her face she forgets to blink. _To breathe._

After this there are more.  
So many more that they all blur into one, and she cannot remember the individual people whose lives she has taken.  
At night she is haunted by ghosts with no names and no faces.

At Tali's funeral, nobody cries, and that is almost a tradgety in itself.

Years later she realises who - what - she has become.  
Strangling, stabbing, shooting; her hands tell of massacres and her eyes look like slaughter.  
Grown men are afraid of her, pleading for their lives, and she is not sure if she is more disgusted in them or herself.

Time and lives and people pass, and her and Ari end up in America.  
Away from her father, and they still cannot stop, and she is either disappointed or proud. _Maybe it is both._  
Then _she _is shot, and Ziva is thrown into a cruel game of cat and mouse; men set on revenge and she knows they are right.  
One of them is following her, and she will never admit that it - he- makes her feel a little less alone.  
Over pizza, he shows it all to her in a different light, and suddenly she is protecting the enemy.  
His smile cannot distract from the despair in his eyes, because something - someone - important has been ripped from him - from them all - for no good reason, no reason at all.  
In a moment of awful clarity, she knows exactly what she must do, and her heart breaks just a little.  
She cannot give them back what is lost, but she can do this, at the very least.  
The shot echoes in her head for days afterwards, and she sits with him until his lips start to turn blue, and she knows he really is gone.  
Outside the sun is shining brightly.  
At least he did not die alone, and she refuses to feel regret.

In return, they offer her a job, a home, a life.  
They give her a new start, and now she feels - she knows - that the killings are just.  
Abby looks her over with black rimmed and tear stained eyes and voices her approval with a hug, which Ziva will never admit to liking. _This is the short version, but it is a lot less painstaking.  
_McGee is just so sweet; you don't get men like him in israel. _In her life.  
_Not like Tony, either.  
She doesn't want to, doesn't need to, doesn't mean to, but she begins to find his eyes comforting, promising things that she did not even know she wanted until now.  
Every day she leaves her apartment with a knife and a gun, because some things will never change.

She does not think about that first time again until a case goes wrong, and she is once again pinned down by a man whose life she has erased.  
His eyes stare at her, and she swears she has seen them before.  
It is karma, or a ghost, or her own sick twisted mind, and there is no one to tell her which.

Time passes quickly, or maybe it is slowly, starting with laughter, with tears, in the bullpen, in the lab.  
Gibbs hits them, Tony teases them, Abby worries about them, and McGee writes about them.  
On Halloween they all dress as things they are not, grab their gear, and go speak to a dead marine.  
Her any Tony go undercover, go into a metal box, go round in circles, and it is new and exciting and - not quite - the American dream.  
Jenny dies, and the nagging fear - that orders from the director are the only thing keeping her part of the team - dies with her.  
Tony loves Jeanne, but maybe not enough, and she loves Michael. _Definately not enough.  
_It still hurts though, and she tries her hardest not to believe the truth she knows Tony is telling. _It all comes back to killing, and that is almost soothing._  
As respective lovers come and go between them, trust and betrayal do too, and Ducky tells them stories under the light of dead bodies.  
There are kisses, puches, fights, and lastly, planes that fly away with one passanger too few.

Nobody is more surprised than her when she ends up back where she started.  
Ordered by her Daddy to kill. _And be killed_.  
She would like to say there is an apology on his lips, in his eyes, in the air, _anywhere_, but there is not. _And she looks - hopefully - for it enough to be sure._  
He has sent her to die; maybe for him, maybe for her country, maybe for no other reason than that he is simply _bad_, and she is not.  
When she is at her most bitter, she likes to think it is revenge.  
He does not look for her, but of course - of fucking course - Tony does, because he always has and always will, and together they murder their way back home.  
_Oh, she is not worthy._  
She no longer has the strength to pretend she hates him.

She stands in a familiar basement, the smell of sawdust and desperation hanging in the air, practically begging for something, for anything, and she should be ashamed.  
Vision blurred, voice dripping with want, and his is laced with comfort. _She would not beg for her life, but some things are more important.  
_"It'sokay" she hears, when he pauses for breath, and it is.  
He has held her and helped her and is a father that is not hers.  
She may just love him for it.

On days when it all becomes too much; when she wakes with blood in her mouth and rope on her wrists and men dying behind her eyelids, she turns to them - to him - and they look like life.  
He is invulnerable, and she is not afraid around him, not scared that she will slip and he will be gone.  
She won't tell him - not now and probably not ever - but he may just mean everything to her, and sometimes she whispers it when she is alone in the bullpen.  
He whispers stuff too; beautiful things that she can't quite hear, but knows the exact meaning of, and she shivers, basking in the glory that is him, this, _them_.  
When it comes down to it though, her job title is still the same, even if she is obliterating bad guys this time.  
"We prefer the term catch" Tony tells her, and it is not entirely true.

Ari killed his first man when he was twelve, and now he is dead.  
Tali did not kill anybody, but somebody killed her, and Ziva, Ziva has taken too many lives to remember, and the ones she does remember she wishes she could forget.  
In Ziva's world, which started fifteen years after she was born, and will end with her life, it is kill and/or be killed.  
The killing is not optional.

* * *

Please review, is it worth continuing? If so I will probably do Abby next, but I also have pretty clear ideas for Tony, McGee, and Gibbs.


	2. Women and Waves

**First kills, First kisses**

Decided to to Gibbs next, not Abby.

Disclaimer: I do not own NCIS.

Chapter 2: Women and Waves - Gibbs has watched many boats sink and many women die.

* * *

"My name is Leroy Jethro Gibbs" he once said, to a girl with red hair and a big smile and an even bigger heart.  
"Gibbs" she christens him, and he smiles too.  
Sitting awkwardly on a train, he kisses her, and she tastes of salt and smells like the sea.

He grew up in Stillwater and he hated it, until he met her, he hated it.  
Hated the guys with nothing better to do than to aimlessly throw punches, hated his dad for many reasons and for none at all, and hated his mom for leaving and for not taking her ghost with her.

He joins the marines as soon as he can; the recruitment pamphlet promising everything and anything, and it delivers.  
This is where he fits in the world; fighting for his country, and the surrounding smell of saltwater reminds him of the girl waiting for him back home.  
Each time he leaves she waves him off with a smile and a kiss and he does not deserve her.

Soon, there are two waves, two smiles, two kisses, and he loves them a surprising amount.  
Then he goes away, or home, and his life is boats and bullets and green pants and hats and bunk beds that sway and men that do not.  
He moves up the ranks, quickly and surely, taking pride in it all. They are proud too, and that makes it all the more satisfying.

He was built for this, for it all, for the thrill and everything after, yet he will never wipe the horrors from his mind.  
On particularly bad operations, men die horrible deaths, dignity stripped from them, and he finds himself questioning the world.  
He never finds answers, and he cannot walk away.  
A rifle in his hand he kills from afar, but he is not a coward.  
He does not have the sense to be a coward.

There is happily ever after for a while, but then, after that, there must be something else, and so they are gone.  
There is revenge, and then there is just him; drinking bourbon and building boats, and it all hurts so goddamn much.

He was in the middle of the pacific ocean, barking orders at new recruits on the deck of a ship when they died, and he never heard the shots. Never heard their screams.  
He returned to find no one waiting for him, and decided not to leave again.  
His misses the Navy, of course, but he misses them more.

"I'm home" he sometimes calls without thinking when he walks through his door, and the meaning behind the lack of reply hits him so hard he can barely breath.  
He sands his boat, all that is left, and it is solid, gives him something to cling to, gives him a distraction.  
Alone in his basement, the wood creaks beneath his feet, and he is sure he can feel waves too.  
Perhaps it is just too much bourbon.

In the years that follow there are other girls, other women, other first kisses, and other endings.  
"With the grain" he tells them all, and the smell of sawdust clouds their senses.  
Some mean something, but most do not, and he knows he should be ashamed of that.

Maybe NCIS saved him, but it was probably Mike Franks.  
Saved him from himself and from God and from drowning in memories and want and bourbon.  
Damn Mike Franks calling him "Probie" and hitting his head, and teaching him all there is to know about catching bad guys.  
Then he is gone, on a plane to Mexico, and Gibbs is handed the torch.  
The flame is white hot, too hot, and it burns his hand.

He has his own team now, and his own Probie, and now he is "Boss" and important and feared.  
They are good, the four - the six - of them, and he likes to think they are achieving something.  
His fist slams on the table, and the suspect begins to talk.  
It is a cycle, perhaps a vicious one, but he can not help the smile of satisfaction when he knows he has won.  
The glass becomes see through, and a million eyes are watching him.  
"On your six" says Tony, and it reminds him of partners lost in the fire.

Abby does not remind him of Kelly, but he loves her, and there is no romance.  
He will kill for her and die for her and she thinks he is invincible.  
He has not got the heart, or maybe the strength, to tell her he is not, he is not.  
"I just break the bottle Abs" he tries, but it falls on deaf ears.  
"Once a marine, always a marine" she tells him, fingers typing furiously at a keyboard, or moving smoothly to form words.  
"Once a hero, never again" he replies with his hands.

Each morning, he still wakes with the knowledge that all he had has gone, and something inside him cracks again and again, bones screaming in silent agony and longing.  
Over time, there are more to add to the list, and the day Kate dies for him is the day he stops regretting the lives he has taken, and starts regretting the ones he has not.  
He told her to always wear gloves at a crime scene. He should have told her to wear a helmet too.

His name is Gibbs, and when he forgets - the name and the man behind it - there is another girl.  
She does not have red hair and she certainly isn't smiling, but she calls him Gibbs, and that is as close to enough as he can hope for.  
"Ari killed Kate, and I, I killed Ari"  
The pieces of his brain slide into place immediately. "Your brother" he says into the darkness, and it is not a question.  
It is in moments like this when he remembers he is not the only one in pain, not the only one to experience loss.  
It makes him feel a little less lonely.  
He holds her as she cries and memories of doing this with another woman, with many other women, flash through his mind.  
Later, he leaves, maybe to catch a train, maybe to join the marines, maybe to do nothing at all, and he owes her.  
She promises to collect.

She does collect, collects him, and he has never really thanked her for that.  
The explosion was the straw that broke his back, and through their hurt, anger, fear, and sheer disbelief, he hears his own voice. "You'll do".  
He gives Tony everything, and he accepts it reluctantly.  
He left like the coward he can never be and although the apology never leaves his lips, he is sorry, he is oh so sorry.  
Sorry for those selfish weeks on a hot beach, drinking beers with Mike, remembering and forgetting.  
A voice in the back of his head, a voice that may be just be Shannon, tells him he cannot stay, and she is soon proved right.  
Ziva sounds like a child on the phone; voice scared and small and he cannot say no.  
He has to admit it feels good to be home, and hell, he even missed McGee.

He slips easily back into the routine, and is only slightly disappointed to see that it still includes death.  
At Jenny's funeral, he hears a little girls laughter in his head, feels lips on his, and he swears he can smell salt in the air.

At night, he dreams of bullets that stay in guns, and blood that stays in veins, and agents that keep breathing, keep breathing, hearts that keep beating.  
He dreams of men that are invincible, and women who never cry, boats that survive the storm, and a house that is not empty.  
On worse nights, he dreams of women that stop breathing, screams trapped in their throats, hands outstretched towards him, eyes begging, pleading.  
He is never enough to save them.  
And every so often he dreams he is looking for someone, someone he never finds, and he is never quite sure who.

Ziva saved his life, and killed her brother for him, and gave him his memory back, and brought him home, and he leaves her alone with men who neither of them trust.  
He does not regret it, he tells himself, until he discovers she is gone for good; lost to the sea and maybe herself and another name goes on his list.  
He spends the night hacking up his latest boat into tiny pieces and burning it in his back yard.  
And when Tony wants revenge - disguised as saving the world - he looks into his eyes and sees Kate reflected back and so he says yes, because there is no other option.  
They bring her home in one piece, and it is more than he expected.

Women have screamed, and shouted and swore at him.  
They have hated him, loved him, hit him, kissed him.  
They have looked at him with eyes that are elated, wistful, frustrated, and indignant. Wounded, demanding, and down right pissed.  
Boats have been lost to the oceans, and men - fellow marines - have bled out in his arms.  
He has outlived people he never should - never wanted to - and yet he cannot apologise for being alive.  
It is a sign of weakness.  
Shannon taught him the rules and how to love and maybe, definitely, how to live, and he owes, he owes, oh, he owes her.

Sometimes, when he looks in the mirror, he sees a tired old man, bitter and alone.  
He resents that, resents himself, resents everything he has lost, everything he has gained.  
He wants... s_omething_, god he aches for it, and he thinks - he fucking knows - that he is never going to get it.  
"Semper Fi" he whispers, into the silence of his basement, and he cannot quite remember what it means.

* * *

Please review, let me know what you think! Most likely will do Tony next.


	3. Dates and Deaths

**First kills, First kisses**

Disclaimer: I do not own NCIS

Some of the details, especially about his childhood, may not be 100% accurate, so sorry if some of it is not the same as on the show.

Chapter 3: Dates and Deaths - Girls come and go, in more ways than one, and oh, how they never change.

* * *

Tony DiNozzo was born rich, and handsome, and popular.  
He excelled at sport, was smart enough for college, and for the first twenty-odd years of his life, everything seemed to just slide into place.  
_Oh, how your life can change._

Three years as a Baltimore cop are strangely unfulfilling, and he all but jumps at the chance to leave.  
It was three years of prison cells and drunk kids and white powder in clear baggies, and he wants more, he needs more.  
He likes to think he deserves more.  
_Oh, he is not sure what he deserves._

He was not lying to Wilson; he joined NCIS for the guns and the babes, and up until recently he would not have been ashamed to admit that.  
_Oh, how a person can change._

Tony had the perfect childhood, at least that is what he is told.  
_Oh, how appearances can be deceiving._  
Dressed in $500 outfits and sleeping in a canopy bed, he hates it, and the burden he bears is expensive.  
He may spend his summers in the Hamptons, but his father has never been to one of his Little League games, and when he cuts him off, Tony is almost glad.  
At his mothers funeral he is lost; a little boy in a sea of unfamiliar faces, and he wants her back, but men do not cry.  
His father tells him this, whilst the casket is lowered, and this is the day that Tony begins to hate him.

Perhaps this is where Gibbs comes in, perhaps not.  
Boss, mentor, and almost father, and neither will confirm that it feels right.  
Tony's childish antics and annoying pranks are a thinly veiled attempt to get Gibbs' attention, and it is all so teenage angst.  
"Grabyourgear" says Gibbs, and Tony spends his life running for the elevator.

McGee is "probie" personified; shy and nervous and so awkward it is almost painful, and seven years down the line Tony still gets a kick from teasing him, still comes up with brand new nicknames.  
_Oh, how some things never change._

But, first, lets not forget - lets never forget - there was Kate.  
If this was a movie, they would have fallen in love, and Kate would have been the "one".  
With her sweet smile, she would have stopped his womanising, and maybe his heart, and married with kids, they would have grown old together.  
But this is not a movie, and nobody fell anywhere, except her body to the ground.  
He will always remember that sound, coupled with the feel of her blood on his face, even when the other things - the smell of her perfume, the colour of her eyes - begin to fade.  
He visits her grave once a year, and sometimes wishes he misses her a little more.  
_Oh, how life goes on._

Ziva is different, dangerous.  
Tony has always liked danger, to break the rules, and this he why he craves her.  
Craves her like a fucking addict - like the guys he used to lock up in Baltimore whilst shaking his head in disgust - and god, he is pathetic.  
So he makes it up by dating double, but she only shakes her head and smiles, and he knows Kate would not be fazed.  
Abby laughs, pigtails swinging, because nobody is fooled.  
_Oh, how he wants her._

When they go undercover, he indulges his fantasies, pretends it is real.  
With his expensive suit, and her flashy jewelry, and their smoking guns, it is like another movie, and he thrives on it.  
It does not end like a movie though; there is no dramatic climax, no happily ever after.  
It is not even a tragedy; they merely go back to their normal lives as if nothing has changed.  
_Oh, everything has changed._

There have been so many cases, and most he cannot remember, but this one he remembers, this one he remembers.  
_Oh, he will never forget._  
Somewhere between the neon lights and the rock hard mattress, there is him, and he is dying.  
Kate is there somewhere too, and a hot nurse, and Brad Pitt, and it is so surreal.  
He cannot breath; cannot breath and this is the end, and then Gibbs is there, and it is suddenly the beginning.  
He slaps him on the head, and tells him he will not die, and he will not, he cannot, he does not.  
He would never disobey an order from Gibbs.

"You'll do" says Gibbs, but the others - including Tony - seem to disagree.  
He is not ready, and armed only with a tape recorder and the word "campfire", he is left to hold down the fort.  
As the elevator doors close on Gibbs, he has suddenly forgotten all of the rules.

Gibbs is back, and Tony had a suspicion that was more like a certainty that this would happen soon enough, and his disappointment is faked to cover relief.  
Celebrating that night, he turns to the waitress holding the cocktail.  
"For the redhead at the bar" he says, because maybe Gibbs has taught him something.

The wall slams shut and Paula is gone too; gone in a flash of realisation and an explosion of bravery.  
He is running down the street; chasing a girl whose name may or may not be Marta, whilst Ari holds Kate at gunpoint, and Ziva does the same to him.  
His name is Tony, Gus, Jean-Paul, and he is a million men, there are a million women, a million lies.  
_Oh, it all seems like such a distant memory._

Jeanne shows him that love is not always enough, in fact it rarely is, and he leaves her with her cheeks wet and her eyes dry; the responsibly of shedding tears that are not and should not be hers.  
She leaves him with a letter, sealed with a kiss, and he does not dare to open it.  
When she accuses him of murdering her dad, he cannot blame her anymore than he can go after her.  
"No" he says, but his eyes scream yes, and hers tell of betrayal.  
_Oh, he will miss her._

Soon Jenny is gone too, lost in a storm of bullets, and he worries that soon there will be no one left.  
She dies a hero, and she dies loved, but it does not make it any easier.  
That night he goes to a bar again, but his drink tastes like blood and the air smells like death, and he cannot bring himself to leave with a women.  
_Oh, how the mighty have fallen._

He spends three months on a boat in the middle of somewhere - nowhere - and god, he hates it.  
Hates the small rooms and the angry men and hates how much he misses what was before.  
At night, he swears he can hear a woman crying next to him, and he aches for home.  
McGee talks to him over a computer screen, and he has never been so pleased to see him.  
He calls Gibbs dad, and wonders how much of it is a lie.

He tells himself that this was inevitable, that it had to end this way.  
That Rivkin was bad, and it was kill or be killed, and he had no choice.  
(The clock is ticking and the gun is loaded and he's bleeding and she's devastated and it's all wrong wrong wrong).

They leave her in Tel Aviv, he leaves her in Tel Aviv, and he finds himself praying.  
He is not sure who is praying to, and he is positive no one is listening, but he prays anyway.  
Prays for her, for him, for those he has lost, for those he does not want to lose.  
He likes to think it keeps him sane; it probably proves he is not.

He goes to Somalia to see a man about a girl -_ kill_ a man,_ for_ a girl, to be more accurate - and he leaves with not only his life, but with hers too, and he will try his best to trust her.  
"Zee-vah", he draws her name out, enjoying the feel of it on his tongue and the taste it leaves in his mouth after all those months of actively not saying it.  
_Oh, it no longer sounds the same._

Again he is at a bar, surrounded by people and very much alone, and there are girls, drinks, laughter, and kisses.  
A flirtatious smirk and a designer shirt and he is in his element, and the next morning he leaves for work before the woman in his bed can wake up.  
He shows his strength by refusing to apologise, but he is not so sure that Gibbs would be proud.

In a few years from now, things will not have changed.  
Gibbs will be on a beach in Mexico, retiring for the second time, and for the second time, someone will call, and he will come back.  
Ziva will still mess up English phrases, despite a decade in the country, and McGee will still be awkward and shy.  
Ducky will never retire, will still talk to the bodies, and Palmer will still listen politely.  
Abby's music will still be loud and her clothes still black and her smile still bright.  
Tony will still be Tony, will still be somebody else, will still be at the bar, will still be late for work, will still be missing the elevator.  
He will still be slapped by Gibbs, will still quote movies, will still ignore his memories, and will still ache for something to grasp.  
He will still love them all - the girls that have been, that are, that will come - and he will still not be sorry.  
He will still fill the void with dating and sex and alcohol and jokes, and he will still be one step behind death.  
_Oh, how things will have changed._

* * *

Please review, found this harder to write that Ziva and Gibbs. Probably Abby next.


End file.
